Getting Smaller
by Insane Troll Logic
Summary: Logan Cale: The Incredible Shrinking Man


_[Note]: Originally posted on livejournal for the fabulous DA_halloween challenge. Only just remembered that most of the DA fandom still lives here.

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GETTING SMALLER  
_Logan Cale: the Incredible Shrinking Man_

(Interviews appeared together in a collection for the first time September 29th, 2042 for the 20th anniversary of the end of the Transwar)

[Dr. Samuel Carr]

Contrary to what most people will tell you, Logan Cale was not a transgenic. If you met him how I met him, that was never even a question. It wasn't often we got someone with that kind of injury.

[...]

I take that back. It wasn't often we got someone with that kind of injury in that could afford the medical care. I was coming off another surgery and they only just caught me before I left. I was the only neurosurgeon in the place. If I hadn't been there, it's very likely someone else would have attempted the procedure and we would have lost him before the shrinking even started.

[...]

Any structural differences? You mean something that might have explained the shrinking? No, nothing like that, but I wasn't looking. I was more worried about the severed spinal cord. Shrinking's not something that ever crosses your mind. Not even twenty years after the Transwar. As far as I know, Logan was the only case in history.

[Cynthia McEachin ('Original Cindy')]

What did I think of Logan Cale the first time is saw him?

Player. He swaggers into Crash, tries to pick up my Boo, practically reeking of money. Now Original Cindy don't exactly swing that way but even she could see he was one damn fine piece of ass.

Next time I set eyes on him, he looked smaller. Not that kind of smaller. That came later. Just different. You wouldn't think the chair mattered so much but it did. First time he was the guy who demanded your attention. Second time, he wasn't. He skulked in through the back on wheels that cost more than your house and you knew he felt it. Never saw him again like that first day. By the time he started to get used to the chair, the shrink had set in.

[Max Guevara ('X5-453')]

It was the blood transfusion that started it. We traced it back when we figured out the pattern but it didn't change the facts. He was dying and it was after the Pulse so of course there wasn't any spare blood. What the hell would you have done?

I could save his life. So I did. Even knowing what I know now, I'd do it again.

[Mathew Sung]

You want to know why there's not much information about Logan Cale? Because he didn't give any information. I knew him for ten years before things got really strange. He was my 'contact' for Eyes Only. I didn't find out until years later that he actually _was_ Eyes Only. One of the best-kept secrets around that was--and it was because Logan didn't tell anyone _anything_.

It was about four months before the Manticore break and a month before he thought he lost Max. It was the first time I'd seen him in a while and I couldn't figure out what was different. He asked about medical tests of some sort. I didn't think much of it because you didn't ask about Eyes Only business.

It's really Bling you should be asking about this kind of stuff if you can find him.

_[Note: Mr. Bonner Lane Ingrum (Bling) was Logan Cale's physical trainer for the first year after the shooting. He moved away from Seattle before the beginning of the Transwar. His currently status is unknown.]_

I didn't realize that these medical files were for personal use. I don't exactly blame the guy. If it were me, I would have used every resource I had. I just wish he would have come out and told me what was happening. But that wasn't Logan. I was a contact. He didn't do personal.

I know the reasons why now, but back then it hurt.

[Sarah Landon]

I was six when the broadcast played. It was something everyone remembered, you know like JFK assassination or the September 11th highjackings or the Pulse. There are always these defining moments. I can tell you exactly where I was when the Eyes Only broadcast played. I was in a Laundromat with my mom and we watched it with sixteen other people on this fuzzy little TV. We could all tell it was different. Everyone in Settle knew about Eyes Only. We'd seen the broadcasts before. Drug Lords and corrupt politicians. But sitting there, we all knew it was different.

We didn't know it was going to start the Transwar but we knew it was big.

[Charles Botkins]

I only met Logan in person once. I lost my wife a few days later so it's not my clearest memory but we did talk a little about the shrinking. He was probably about five feet tall in those days. He looked normal just, you know, small. I'd just found out my wife was one of the original Manticore escapees. One of the ones who'd broken out with Max. Meeting someone who was shrinking was just sort of the icing on the cake.

I do remember one thing though. It was something Cale said about the whole mess. He said 'It took a while to recognize the shrinking for what it was. I spend my life at half my original height. What's a few inches difference?'

The way I see it, it probably wasn't that big a difference until all of a sudden it was.

[Cynthia McEachin ('Original Cindy')]

Original Cindy was one of the only people to see that man over the summer. He was busted up about losing his squeeze. Died in his arms. Only she didn't. Not really. Original Cindy never got that whole story. But the man was on a mission. He was going to take Manticore down and he was going to do it before the shrinking took him down.

He didn't seem that worried yet. He just didn't give a damn about coming out alive. Hell, hot boy was probably thrilled he wasn't going have to stay around this long without Max.

[Alec McDowell ('X-5 494')]

I was supposed to kill him. That always gets people when I say it. My biggest Manticore job was to dispose of Eyes Only. Max took me down before I could and what I remember most from the night Manticore blew was this tiny little guy maybe four feet tall holding a gun on me. Me. A trained Manticore soldier.

I remember thinking 'this is the great and powerful Eyes Only.'

[...]

Thought he would have been taller.

[Dr. Samuel Carr]

Logan Cale was shrinking. Shrinking at the rate of 1/7th of an inch per day. He was six feet two inches tall when he started. Which mean it would take 518 days for him to shrink down to nothing. There were no specialists in this field and after Eyes Only came down on Cale Industries, he didn't have the money to hire one. I let him come see me once a month or so. After all, I considered him a friend and I was fascinated with the case.

One of the most interesting aspects was Logan's paraplegia. He first started showing signs of renewed motor control after about a year. It made sense when I ran the tests. Such sever alterations in a person's stature would effect his motor system greatly. There were bone density changes and structural adjustments with every inch. Eventually his injury was just part of what changed.

The process of regaining his legs lasted about two weeks and then Logan was two and a half feet tall but with fully functioning limbs. I have some patients who would have considered it a fair trade.

[Asha Barlow]

A lot of people thought it was funny when the shrinking really started showing. You should have heard the jokes in the S1W. Us doing errands for EO from a contact who looked like he could be a pre-Pulse doll. But Logan was as serious as he could be. He was a professional. Got me out of more jams than I care to admit and toward the end, he did it riding on Alec's shoulder.

He's the reason the right side came out on top in this war. The stories are about Max and huge speeches and Alec working a long con. There's the story of the epic battle. The one everyone knows. When the normals put aside their differences and figured out the Transwar wasn't about fighting the transgenics but about fighting the cult. But Logan Cale was the reason any of us got out of there alive.

Size doesn't matter you know. Logan was the size of a rag doll and getting smaller and he was still the biggest person I knew.

[Calvin Theodore ('Sketchy')]

I wanted to do a story on him. I had the whole pitch for the New World Weekly about the Incredible Shrinking Man. I could have totally convinced Logan to go for it. But no, NWW told me it was too out there and I ended up doing a story about a zombie uprising on Mars instead.

['Joshua']

Logan was friend of Max. Max called me big fella. Logan was little little fella.

[Cynthia McEachin ('Original Cindy')]

Took a lot of people by surprise when Alec started carrying on with Logan sitting on his shoulder. Especially considering rumors had Alec going out with Logan's squeeze. But they were friends. When Alec started the infiltration, Logan was about as big as a car key. Alec doesn't like to talk about what happened inside and by the time he was out, Logan was past his last tick.

Max asked Alec what happed to him when he first came back. Original Cindy don't know what he said to her, but that's the only time she ever saw her boo cry.

[Alec McDowell ('X-5 494')]

He was my pocket conscious. Called himself Jimmy Cricket or something like that. I don't know what the hell it means.

It's weird you know. The only real image people have of Logan Cale is the picture they took when we raised Joshua's flag over Terminal City. He was about a foot tall, standing on my shoulder, bracing himself on my ear. I remember seeing that for the first time and thinking he would have been on Max's shoulder if it wouldn't have killed him.

[Sara Landon]

Eyes Only never went off the air. That was what surprised me the most when I found out about what was really happening to him. The government or at least the cult conspiracy in the government had been trying to spread rumors about his origins since The Broadcast. They had most of the public believing he was one of the transgenics. The truth was so much more bizarre. But they made sure it got out. The story of Logan Cale and the humans who'd given their lives fighting the transgenic cause. The hack lasted longer then sixty seconds.

And the day after that, Eyes Only was back. This time telling about the Cult and the apocalypse and doing the right thing for everyone.

They're still not sure when the original Eyes Only left for good. But I always thought it was the long hack that marked the change.

[Max Guevara ('X-5 452')]

The last time I saw Logan? It was when he and Alec went off to the cult headquarters. We knew the thing was controlled by computers and Logan was our best computer guy even if he was thumb sized.

[...]

Me and Logan? What do want me to say? Me and Logan were one big could have been. But between the virus and the Transwar and the shrinking, we just weren't.

[Dr. Samuel Carr]

In my medical opinion, I believe that when he shrunk that final seventh of an inch, the compression became too much for his body. His cells burst because they were unable to contain the internal mass with such greatly increased surface area.

[...]

No, I can't think of any way he would survive it. Then again, I can't think of any reason for this to start happening in the first place. There's not a lot you can't explain in medicine, but Logan Cale was one of those mysteries.

Maybe he did make it. Maybe he hit zero and started growing again. That would make as much sense as anything else.

[Calvin Simon Theodore ('Sketchy')]

The way I heard it, he went in and didn't come back out. Then again, he was a pretty small dude by then, the walk would be a lot longer. He might have just gotten stepped on.

....Man I wish I hadn't just thought that.

[Asha Barlow]

I like to think he's still out there. It's unrealistic but after the Pulse and the Transwar and all that mess, the world's finally learning to hope again. We earned that much.

[Alec McDowell ('X-5 494')]

What you want some sort of closure on this? I'm not the guy you want to talk to. Go find Cindy or Max or Asha or one of the kids. They can give you the warm fuzzies. All I've got is facts.

I was the last person to see Logan Cale alive. I'd been working the long con inside the cult. The goal was to get access to the computers for sabotage. By the time that happened I was about three weeks deep and Logan was about a half inch tall. He whispered the instructions into my ear and it was only because I was transgenic that I could even make him out.

I punched in the codes like he said and then he told me to put him down into the circuitry. Told me there was something he could do to cripple them for good. Must have worked because when the Cult went to drop their bio bomb and start their apocalypse, it backfired on them. The computer system completely trashed. They came looking for me and I went looking for Logan because if I learned anything after Manticore it's that you don't leave someone behind. Only he wasn't there anymore. He should have still been there. A seventh of an inch tall but he should have still been there.

[...]

If I'd have waited another second I'd have earned myself a bullet. Don't get me wrong, given the choice between that and walking back without Cale, I might have almost picked the bullet.

But hey, the guy survived five years being Eyes Only alone. Then he survived a bullet to the spine that should have killed him. Then he survived a girlfriend with a virus that could have killed him and a year and a half of shrinking. If anyone could beat the odds, it's him.

(end)


End file.
